Secrets and Lies Part III
21 May 2017Jellicoe
Detective Chief Superintendent Janine Slaney of the New Rosyth Police was in a particularly foul mood as she was driven to work that morning, she was irritated enough that her break with her family had been spoiled, but that was just an occupational hazard of being a police officer, it went with the job and she'd make it up to them. Hopefully. What had really nettled her was that her orders had not come from her superiors on the force or even from government, but from the greasy, oil smooth director of the Alioth Intelligence Service. She despised the man, and she hated working with Spooks, she hated their ingrained sense of superiority, their smug condescension towards the police and their apparently unthinking belief that the people who's full time job it was to catch criminals were a bunch of obtuse amateurs whose only use was to do the leg work. She also knew that her dislike of them was returned with interest and that if the AIS had brought the police in then something had gone very badly wrong , a common belief among senior police officers, not entirely without foundation, was that the intelligence people only involved the police in operations when things were desperate and a scapegoat was needed, which as senior investigating officer in this case meant her. On the other hand this was a chance to do some proper police work again, and at her level that had come to be a rarity, administrative paper shuffling and wrangling over budgets seemed to take up most of her time these days - 'if you enjoy your job never become too good at it.' She often joked to her juniors 'otherwise they promote you away from doing it.'The car slowed as it hit the beginnings of the city's rush hour and Slaney put aside her dark mood and went back to studying the case she'd just been handed. It was an interesting one, a manhunt, the quarry being a Federation agent who'd worked his way into the confidence and the bed of a senior figure in the Alioth Independents. Slaney raised an eyebrow when she read the name of the dupe, she had had occasional dealings with Kira Goméz in the past and the woman had always struck her as a very shrewd cookie, intelligent and extremely switched on, the last person she'd have expected to be suckered in by a Romeo agent, just goes to show that even a good coppers nose is never 100% reliable Slaney thought. She returned to her slate her anger returning as she read through the painfully thin contents of the file, she had spent nearly forty years on the force first learning then teaching that shared information was the lifeblood of any investigation yet the AIS guarded their information as though it were nuggets of the purest gold in a misers hoard. She arrived at the station tired, irritable and concerned.
"Morning Guv." Detective Inspector George Owen, her deputy greeted her as she entered the incident room like a force of nature. "We're just about ready to go."
"Good, any leads?"
"We've had this dropped on us even later than it was dropped on you. We've only just got the team together and the room ready."
"Okay, I need to speak to this Kira Goméz, I know it's delicate so she doesn't have to come into the station, tell her I'll be at hers for ten." The inspector shuffled uncomfortably. "What is it George?"
"AIS won't give us access to her Guv. Say they're interrogating her themselves. They did say they'd pass on anything relevant." He said apologetically.
"Are they taking the fucking piss?" Slaney exploded. "I get this dropped on me by that slimeball shitbag of a director of theirs who expects me to drag his arse out of the fire with one hand tied behind my back. Coffee, strong and black, now." She barked the final order at a nearby constable then looked back to Owen. "I want to speak to the Chief Constable as soon as I've spoken to the team, make it happen."
"Yes Guv."
"Now get the key people together in five minutes and find out where that fucking plod is with my bloody coffee." George Owen waited until his back was turned before smiling, he had worked with Slaney for over twenty years and at first he had been terrified of her volcanic temper but familiarity had bred if not contempt, never that, then certainly amusement, so long as he were not the focus of her wrath of course, but she was the best detective on the force by a mile so he figured she was entitled to her outbursts, and the fact that she'd always made sure she kept him as her deputy made him think he must be at least a passable copper. He often wondered how Slaney managed to square her hair trigger temper and devotion to the force with her apparently idyllically happy family life, he himself had never married, never had time, the job was his wife and as he often joked, she didn't mind sharing him with the occasional mistress.
Janine Slaney sat down, propped her feet on her desk and looked at the senior members of her team now gathered in her office, her temper slightly assuaged by the arrival of her coffee and the old thrill of a major investigation. She would crack this one if it killed her and then she would show that oozing slug of a Director of Intelligence exactly what the meaning of smug was. She flicked on her console and the holographic image of a tall, blue eyed man his blonde hair just beginning to show a hint of grey appeared in the middle of the room.
"Right this is the man we're after. Fed agent, what do we know about him George?"
"Stannis Alexander Montgomery Leofwine Jellicoe." Slaney scowled at the mans name; how typically old Earth old money, probably looks down on most of the people on his own planet. She'd met such people from parts of Earth before occasionally, always perfectly dressed, always impeccable manners and always this irritatingly affected coolness and good humour whatever the situation. Bastards. Yes she would very much enjoy taking this man down. "Federation citizen born on Earth." Slaney smiled as her suspicion was confirmed. "Forty two years old, expelled from the Federation Naval Academy for insubordination. Started out as a haulage contractor in Epsilon Serpentis before switching to bounty hunting. Moved to Argents Claim ten years ago then left suddenly three years later. Rear Admiral in the Fed Auxiliary with several decorations for bravery, reappeared here four months ago when he spent several weeks with this Kira Goméz."
"That sounds sus." Put in Fisher Shaw. "He vanishes for seven years then turns up out of the blue and this woman starts spilling state secrets just like that?"
"Maybe he's hung like a donkey?" Quipped Ferrers Locke the newest member of the team but the ripple of laughter was cut short by a murderous look from Slaney.
"Not our concern. This man's wanted for espionage and assault, it's our job to catch him and I want him in my cells by tea time. Jack, what do we know about his movements?"
Jack Shaw checked his display before speaking slowly as though carefully weighing every word. His speciality was surveillance, and what he didn't know about the camera network probably didn't exist. "He was booked in at the Astoria, he left at 19:30 last night and took a cab to Miss Goméz's apartment at Liberation Towers, he entered the building at 19:47 and entered her suite at 19:53. At 21:47 AIS entered the building but he was gone when they reached her rooms. At 22:41 they stormed the escape centre, by then he'd been gone around ten minutes."
"Those fucking pricks stormed the escape centre?" Slaney erupted. "So now every major crim on the planet knows we've rumbled their rat run, have those fucking arse holes any idea how much police time and effort they've just pissed away because they couldn't be arsed making sure the other end was covered before they went in waving their dicks about?"
"After that there's nothing, no trace at all." Jack tried to ignore his superiors outburst.
"Have you played around with the camera software? George Owen asked.
"The facial recognition software is set to ping us on a 90% match and there's nothing, I've reduced it to 80% and still no matches, I'm re-running it at 70% now but we'll need human eyes to go through the results as we will get false matches. Setting it to anything less is pointless, it'd ping half the city."
"What do you make of him Deena?" Slaney asked Deena Mugabe the psychological profiler.
"He's a pilot, a combater so he's used to making snap decisions under a lot of pressure, the fact that he's Elite rated shows he usually gets them right so he'll be confident in his own judgment, he won't panic and he won't freeze, he'll be calm and decisive but not rash, he'd be dead by now if that were the case. He'll be feeling uncomfortable as space is his usual battleground but he can improvise quickly, the way he changed his plans and ditched the car and the escort shows that."
"And as he spent three years here he'll know the city." Slaney said thoughtfully. "What do you think he did next?"
"I don't think he'll be off world yet." Deena replied. "Making for a port and boarding a ship right away would be relying on blind luck and he won't do that unless he's got no choice, he'll be quite happy to be patient and wait for the right moment to slip away. If my reading of him's right he'll be looking to go to ground till the immediate fuss dies down."
Slaney drained her coffee and sat back in her chair as though intently studying the ceiling. "The yard where his car was waiting, is that the only way out of the rat run?" Jack Shaw nodded. "Are there any cameras on it?"
"There are but they appear to have gone offline at 21:53."
"What an amazing coincidence." George Owen said drily.
"Are there camera's on the street that cover the exits from the yard?" Jack nodded. "Okay, he didn't leave by the exit the car was parked at the escort told us that, show the camera feed from the other exit, begin at 21:50." A holographic representation of a busy street appeared filled with well dressed people busy enjoying an evening out but in the office all eyes were on the entrance to a dark alley leading to the yard. "Double speed." Slaney ordered, then. "Stop." The hologram froze just as a tall man with his head down, half covered by his hand emerged from the passageway. "There he is." Slaney said slowly. "That's our man." She highlighted the dark figure in the shadows. "Computer follow the highlighted individual." The man walked on, staying in the shadows, keeping his head down and turned away from the cameras until he reached the entrance to a hotel, whereupon he entered. "Gotcha." Slaney said under her breath, then addressed the room. "Get this mans image to all units, get everyone you can to that hotel and make sure he doesn't leave, I want all exits covered. Get me a car and tell traffic to clear a route and George get armed response there as quick as they can." She checked her watch. "It's 08:03 now I want him nicked by nine."